toward a theory of games literacy

Volume 52, Numbers 1 & 2 T E L E M E D I U M 9

Part One THE PEDAGOGYTHEORIES RELATING GAMES TO LEARNING AND MEDIA LITERACY

Kurt Squire, Idit Harel Caperton, Will Wright, Henry Jenkins, James Gee, Ian Bogost

Toward a Media Literacy for GamesK U RT D. SQUIRE

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MADISON

“This court reviewed four different video games and found no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech. The court finds that video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures.”

—Senior U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, April 20021

Kurt Squire is an Assistant Professor inEducational Communications and Technology atthe University of Wisconsin-Madison. Squireearned his PhD from Indiana University inInstructional Systems Technology. He is a formerelementary and Montessori teacher. Squire’s disser-tation focused on how playing Civilization IIImediated students’ understandings of social studies.For the past two years, Squire has been instrumen-tal in shaping the vision and research for MIT’sGames-to-Teach Project and The Education Arcade. In 2000, Squire alsoco-founded joystick101.org, a web community studying game culture.

Imagine this preceding quote being said about books, television, orfilm. Imagine a federal judge reading excerpts from four books (imagine,perhaps two romantic novels, a murder mystery, and a spy thriller) andsaying that books could not convey ideas. We would say that the judgeis making a sampling error if nothing else. Taking a small sampling fromfour titles in any media obviously misses the breadth of what a mediumis. For example, we wouldn’t expect someone to read the Biblical storyof Jezebel being eaten by dogs and pretend to be in a position to judgethe merits of the Bible, let alone books in general. Fortunately, this isan extreme position and was eventually overturned. Unfortunately, it isa common one, watching a few minutes of recorded game play and

believing that all games are violent, misogynist,or anti-social without playing, let alone playing orfinishing a game. Thus, writing in 2005, the ques-tion is no longer, “Is media literacy necessary?”but the question is, “What kind of media literacyis necessary and for whom?”

We can say that Limbaugh is illiterate with themedium if for no other reason than his selectionin games, which overlooks most of the most high-

ly regarded work of this generation. But beyond sampling problems,what struck most game scholars as ludicrous was the idea that JudgeLimbaugh was in any position to comment on the meaning of videogames. Not only did he not play any games, but there is nothing to sug-gest that he would have understood what he was playing if he did. If hewere literate with games, he might know that DOOM is not only adecade old, but a game about visceral reactions, adrenaline, and bleed-ing-edge technology, a game that is designed to make the player’s jawdrop, stomach churn, and pulse race, as opposed to causing reflection orexpressing colder, intellectual ideas. When DOOM came out, its pri-mary achievement was its pioneering use of the 3D camera and cleverlevel design to create a feeling of immersion and suspense. If we look atDOOM in a contemporary context (i.e. DOOM 3) we might cite it asan example of a game that uses pacing, light, and shadow to great aes-thetic effect, but not one that say, causes reflection on the state of whatit means to be human (unlike Ico, perhaps).

10 T E L E M E D I U M Winter / Spring 2005

Thirty years ago, when games were little more than a fad, we mighthave dismissed Limbaugh’s comments as silly, maybe even charming intheir naivete. But games are no longer relegated to shady arcades andPC enthusiasts’ garages. Games are now an established industry andmaturing medium. As it has been well reported, game sales outpaceHollywood box office sales. Games are used for training, advertising,and sales in business, the government, and K-12 education and theSerious Games industry is projected to be about $50 million annually atthis writing (Rejeski, 2002; Sawyer, 2003; Squire, 2005). Game devel-opment and game studies courses and programs are now commonplaceat most universities. In short, as games have become interwoven intothe fabric of our social institutions, people like Judge Limbaugh will bemaking decisions about games, and we need mechanisms for communi-cating what the medium is and is about.

Once we argue for media literacy programs that investigate meaningmaking, we must deal with the cultural contexts of media consumption.To take the DOOM example, expert gamers read a franchise likeDOOM within a context of production and consumption. They under-stand that DOOM is trying to immerse the players in a horrific envi-ronment featuring bleeding-edge graphics, and its role in the largercanon of games as the first 3Dshooter.2 Most gamers know thatDOOM is developed at ID soft-ware and is the result of JohnR o m e r o ’s design creativity andJohn Carmack’s 3D programminggenius, but is now largely a vehi-cle for showcasing Carmack’snext generation technology andmay earn more money throughfuture licensing of the technology than through the game itself. In otherwords, they understand not only how to read the game, but can under-stand it within the modes of production of the industry and place italong side other similar games.

But games are fundamentally a participatory medium, and an equallyimportant part in the story of DOOM is in how ID released level edit-

ing tools, and eventually the game’s source code, making it possible forconsumers to create custom characters, levels, games, and in-gamemovies (machinima). In other words, DOOM must also be consideredwithin the context of what people do with it, which likely leads to aneven deeper network of meanings which might include a knowledge ofthe first person shooter, competitive gaming, the CyberathleteProfessional League (CPL), Fata1ity, modding, machinima, Quake,gaming engines, and Stevie Case. These webs of meaning will differ,unique to each person and dependent on one’s situation. But gamers(much like Bible study groups) experience and interpret games in socialcontexts, with and in response to other people, events, and practices. Inthe case of DOOM, it would be impossible for any game scholar toignore the central role DOOM has played in establishing a creativeethos within gaming communities. So equally important are issues ofgame culture.

Games Cultures In these pages, I argue that crucial to games literacy is not just themeaning of games, but rather, the ideologies and ethos of games cul-tures. They are typical (but not exclusive) sites of digital literacies thatare important to success in the new capitalist societies, but largely anti-thetical to the cultures of schools. I begin by using Gee’s notion ofDiscourse to suggest how games literacy programs might start with dia-logue about games and gamer culture. Next, I describe a media literacyunit I developed with Deborah Briggs of Firaxis Games around the gamePirates!, which uses historical strategy games as a window into media lit-eracy issues, finding that for many students, the cultural issues aroundgame development, particularly opportunities for identity trajectories innew media, fast capitalist industries were at least as intriguing as thegames themselves. Finally, I end with thoughts on how media literacyprograms might move forward via inquiry-based learning approaches.

Whose Gaming LiteraciesThe question of media literacy in gaming, then, is a perplexing one. Onthe one hand, we have a generation of baby boomers, perhaps best epit-omized by Judge Limbaugh with little literacy with games, and a gener-ation of students raised with the Internet and a host of gaming litera-cies, many of which are not affiliated with school (Beck & Wade, 2004;

Gee, 2003). If we are going toacknowledge that tod a y ’s stu-dents have literacies that theirteachers lack, one option wouldbe to “let the kids” develop thecurriculum. One can imagine 14year old “l33t speaking” boysteaching media literacy courses,where all teachers, students, par-ents, and elected officials arerequired to finish a game like

DOOM3. This (hopefully) makes obvious that the question is not“whether or not one group can simply make sense of texts”, but accord-ing to whose systems of interpretation. One of the core issues for medialiteracy, then, is whose literacies will be privileged, what questions willbe considered legitimate and which ones are not asked.

A scene from Doom 3.

“ D I G I TAL GAMES ARE A MEDIUM WITH TIES TO

EARLIER MEDIA (SUCH AS FILM AND TELEVISION),

BUT ALSO CULTURAL PRACTICES – WHICH ARE

I N H E R E N T LY TIED TO SOCIAL CLASS, STATUS,

AND VA L U E S . ”


James Paul Gee (1996) has developed Discourse theory as a way of dis-cussing literacy as a social achievement that is tied to particular sensemaking systems (or ideologies). A key achievement of Discourses is thatthey function to “normalize” particular perspectives, making othersseem abnormal or deviant (Gee, 1996). This is how, for example, to aca-demics, spending 40+ hours per week in an online game may seemdeviant or self-indulgent, whereas for many gamers, spending 40+ hoursper week writing a paper to be read by a few dozen people (at best) isdeviant and self-indulgent. In the DOOM example, I described onetype of PC gaming Discourse system (c.f. Kushner, 2003; King &Borland 2003). However, there are many overlapping and competingDiscourses, and it does not necessarily follow that we want to initiate allteachers, parents, and elected officials into a “l33t” gamer Discourse(although that would be amusing).3 Instead, we can use media literacyas an avenue to understand the broader Discourses in which meaningsare made and reflect on different value systems.

I argue that good media literacy programs are founded on dialogue aboutthe games people play, why we play them, and what concerns non-gamers have about game play. Having led several such discussions withchildren, teachers, parents, and librarians over recent years, I am sur-prised at how little teachers and students discuss games (c.f. Squire,2004; 2005). In one class I visit-ed, roughly 20% of the boys inclass were playing World ofWarcraft, yet teachers had noidea of what a massively multi-player game was, or that it waseven feasible with today’s tech-nology. They were shocked tolearn that their students weregoing home and logging on toservers with tens of thousands ofpeople from around the worldeach night. They had no ideathat their students had developed virtual identities, built over hundredsof hours of game play and worth thousands of real world American dol-lars, sellable on ebay (Castronova, 2001; Steinkuehler, 2004). Of course,not every student is playing E v e r q u e s t or World of Wa r c r a f t. However,even if not every student knows that E v e r q u e s t was once the 77t h l a r g e s teconomy in the world, most have an idea of what E v e r q u e s t i s .

Such dialogues let us uncover fundamental assumptions about media,particularly stereotypes about games and gamers. Most teachers have lit-tle awareness of these stereotypes they hold or the low cultural status ofgames (Squire, 2002). For example, most teachers express an understand-able concern about their students spending too much time sitting andplaying video games. When asked if they would feel better if childrenplayed traditional board games or chess, many say “yes”. A precocious stu-dent usually follows, “What if it’s computer chess or R i s k?” One can imag-ine where the conversation goes from here, but obviously part of teach-ers’ anxiety about games is also anxiety about technological and socialchange, and dialogue about games can help bring these concerns to light.

A second theme underlying these discussions, however, is the relativesocial status of different leisurely pursuits. Sometimes I have studentsand teachers rank the “social acceptability” of several games and sports,

including bowling, golf, chess, computer chess, cards (e.g. canasta) play-ing football, playing fantasy football, Dungeons and Dragons, andCounterstrike. Both can do so without hesitation, and usually they cometo realize that those leisure activities associated with adults and uppermiddle class have more status than those with lower SES or youth.Students and teachers alike need to realize that digital games are amedium with ties to earlier media (such as film and television), but alsocultural practices inherently tied to social class, status, and values.

Indeed, the moment that discussions of games are evoked, it is difficult toavoid deeper issues of cultural values, particularly around work ethic and“wasting time”. Ask kids what their parents think about games, and “wast-ing time” usually comes up quickly. We can use this observation as anentrée to talking about the Protestant work ethic or even linguistics (i.e.why is it that we think of time as a commodity or resource to be “spentwisely?” c.f. Lakoff and Johnson, 1980). Further comparisons can be drawnbetween game play and more socially sanctioned forms of leisure.

Very real political struggles lie underneath these debates as students,teachers, parents, administrators, and activists struggle to define whatmedia literacy might look like; look no further than the censorshipissues and marginalization of Goth culture following the Columbine

shootings to see the politicalimplications of media.Although one rarely saw it, onecould imagine students afterColumbine rallying together todispel myths about Q u a k e,DOOM, and goth culture moregenerally, just as we saw legisla-tures move to ban access to vio-lent games. The political leftand political right hold beliefsabout what media studentsought to be exposed to (and

ought to be allowed in schools), and what constitutes media literacy, butboth tend to represent media issues in protectionist terms. For some, itmight be a critical understanding of corporate American consumerism;for others, it might be an understanding of the cultural cancer of violentmedia. For gamers, libertarians, and technophiles, it might be somethingaltogether different (c.f. Jenkins, 2000; Katz, 1999).

The good news is, as Gerard Jones (2002) argues in Killing Monsters,simply bringing up issues like violence in games is a very good way ofreflecting on these Discourses and attendant value systems. Themoment the social impact of games is raised, related concepts such aschildhood, violence, innocence, and the media come to light. Most kidshave strong, differing opinions on violence in media, and are inclinedto share them, which can serve as the basis for student writing, artwork,discussion, or inquiry. Not only are discussions of issues of violence inthe media potentially powerful interdisciplinary anchors (c.f. Barab &Landa, 1997), but I would argue, productive ends in themselves. Simplyhaving dialogue not only makes discussions of violence “talkaboutable,”a topic worthy of serious discussion, but also has the potential to surfacecore values and hopes for what societies can be like, which are at theheart of questions around violence and the media (Jenlink & Carr,1997; Banathy & Jenlink, 2004).

“IF MEDIA LITERACY PROGRAMS ARE GOING

TO ENGAGE WITH THE DEEPER CULTURAL

SIGNIFICANCE OF MEDIA SHIFTS, THEY WILL NEED

TO TAKE SERIOUSLY THE SOCIAL AND CULTURAL

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DIGITAL GENERATIONS

AND MORE TRADITIONAL ONES.”


Historical Games as an Avenue for Media LiteracyBut how do we bring games into the classroom? Given that most teach-ers are ignorant, even afraid of games, where do we begin? One way I’vebeen exploring is through using historical simulation games in class-rooms. Surprising to some, games that use historical eras as a backdropfor gameplay are among the most popular games on the computer.Civilization, Rise of Nations, Pirates!, Age of Empires, and EuropaUniversalis are top selling, critically praised games. Some games, such asCivilization III even match up pretty well to particular views of history(Squire, 2004). Historical simulation games are particularly interesting,as they allow opportunities examining how games work, how they rep-resent phenomena, and how they differ from other media.

Over the past few months, I have been working together with DeborahBriggs from Firaxis Games, exploring how to use Sid Meier’s Pirates! asthe basis for media literacy. Sid Meier’s Pirates! (released in 2004), is an“E” rated PC game in which the player is a pirate on the Spanish mainbetween 1600-1700. This project stems from my own experiences play-ing Pirates! in middle school which allowed me to “sail” through A.P.colonial American history. Indeed, any Pirates! player worth his salt hasa pretty good working knowledge of Caribbean geography, the charac-teristics of colonizing nations, and other basic social history of the peri-od.4 Further, Pirates!, is anything but a perfect simulation of Caribbeanhistory, producing opportunities for students to think about what is“realistic” in games vs. what is “made-up” for the purposes of fun, theimpact of violence in entertainment, and how games get made.

TABLE 1Outline of Media Literacy Unit with Pirates!

DAY TOPIC ACTIVITIES

1 Introduction • Present workshop agenda

to games • Raise questions about games• Examine beliefs about games• Install game • Introduction to game

2 Life as a game • Academic preparation for game

designer design• Requisite skills• Different roles and jobs

3 So you want to • Discussion of play testing

be a play tester • Playing pirates• Discussing pirate readings

4 How games are • The desks and desktops of

made (at Firaxis game designers

Games) • Beta test Pirates! XBox• Visit programmers, artists,

producers

5 Debrief • Discuss “realism” in games• Discuss life in media industries

TABLE 2Typical Game Development Functions, Roles

FUNCTION REQUIRED SKILLS ROLES SPECIAL PREPARATION

Game design Psychology Developer / Programmer Rapid prototyping programming; Expertise in

game play, fun, game “magic”, user experience.

Creating game Art / visual skills: color, • Textures • 2D art, fashion, history, culture

assets art history, composition • Models • Sculpture, geography, architecture• Animations • Animation

Programming Physics, mathematics • 3D programming • 3D geometry• Artificial Intelligence • Algorithms• Game programming • Game design• Interface programming • Human computer interface, art

Sound design Music composition, Sound design, music composition, Everything related to music; interactive

performance, recording, effects composition

editing, sound design

Project management Management, psychology, Producer, Manager, supervisor, Organizational psychology, software

organization designer development, workflow

User experience Psychology, research User testing, interface tweaking Usability testing, game design, game interface

methods, Human-Computer

Interaction


This spring, I ran a week long workshop with a group of kids playingPirates!, which lasted 90 minutes per day. We played Pirates!, listened totalks from designers, and visited Firaxis Studios (See Table 1). We dis-cussed what it is like being a play tester, game designer, sound engineer,and programmer. Not surprisingly, the students had a better sense ofgame development and the kinds of skills it requires than their teach-ers. What did surprise us, was how little students or teachers knew aboutthe culture of a technology sector company, leading to interesting rev-elations about the social organization of schools.

We began the workshop with a general discussion of games and class-room learning. We took a quick poll and found out that 50% of the classhad checked out a book from the library based on an interest in a sub-ject (mostly mythology and history) generated through games. As weinstalled the games we studied the Caribbean maps that came with thegame. I led a discussion of pirates: Who were they? Where did theycome from? Were there women pirates? Are there pirates today? Wewalked through the initial steps of Pirates! together, and discussed dif-ferences between Dutch, Spanish, English, and French patterns of col-onization in the context of students choosing which country to startwith. Most students decided against playing as a Spanish privateer, asthey clearly had the most gold (and therefore were easiest to plunder).

Students spent the last 30 minutes playing Pirates!. All of the partici-pants (12 students, 6-8 grade, all boys) were expert gamers, but they hadwildly divergent game experiences. Some had high level (30 and up)characters in World of Warcraft.5 Others preferred action console games.Many of the students were a little confused at the beginning, as Pirates!gives the user relatively little direction or opening quests and assumesthat the player will quickly develop his or her own goals. Students start-ed asking, “Wait, is this a role playing game, a strategy game, or what?”.We discussed how it fit or broke different genre conventions, particular-ly how the game “let you make up your own story” more than tradition-al console RPGs. Interesting, this is just the conversation the marketersand publishers were having in deciding how to market the XBox versionof the game. Although this “lack of direction” was disconcerting at first(leading to many funny ironic jokes such as “these modern video gameshave you kids too used to following directions”), by the end of the week,each of them appreciated the open-ended nature of P i r a t e s ! game play.

On the second day, Barry Caudill, producer of Pirates! addressed thekids. He described how he entered the games industry as a play tester.He discussed how play testing (most students’ dream job) demandedproblem solving and communication skills; good play testers are good atmethodically testing games and clearly communicating the conditionsunder which games crash. We discussed which academic subjects weregood preparation for the games industry (all of them, roughly speaking),and what kinds of opportunities were available for them in the gamesindustry at the moment (See Table 2). We also discussed how by thetime these kids graduated from high school, the games industry willhave evolved at least two generations of hardware, so these roles willhave changed in new and unpredictable ways. Barry described how“learning to learn” and being comfortable learning new skills were prob-ably the most important skills they could have; no one is ever “donelearning” in the games industry.

By the third day, students were starting to understand the game. As stu-dents played, they generated questions about the game, focusing specif-

ically on issues of accuracy. Students wondered about the accuracy ofsword fights, ship battles, and pirates’ lives. They wondered about piratebrutality, life in pirate cities, and how it was that in this era, pistols andswords co-existed. Perhaps due to the cartoony graphics, students actu-ally assumed that the game was far less accurate than it really was, andwere surprised to find that pirates frequently did all the things they weredoing in the game (signing letters of marque, acting as “unofficialnavies”, sacking major Spanish settlements, and establishing buccaneersettlements).

We read excerpts from texts (most of which overlapped text in the“pirateopedia,” which is available in game) focusing on the biography ofpirates, famous pirate stories, and modern pirates.6 We wanted to besure to dispel romantic images of pirates in movies, books, and inPirates! itself. The stories of modern day pirates in the South AsianPacific, particularly ties between pirates and Al Qaeda seemed to dispelany romantic myths of pirates.

On day 4, we visited Firaxis. Students met designers, beta tested Pirates!for the XBox, and discussed the art of game development with Firaxisartists, programmers, and usability testers. Outside of playing Pirates! forthe XBox (the first kids to have done so), the highlight for most stu-dents was, oddly, simply seeing the work environment of a modern gam-ing company. As the producer of Pirates! Barry Caudill opened up hiscomputer, students asked questions about the many applications on his

Scenes from Pirates! New caption? Placed together, OK? Specifically referenced somewhere in text?


desktop. Questions included, “Do you really get to use messenger atwork?” and “Have you played all of those games?”

Seeing students’ reactions to a modern game development studio –which is not unlike any other .com startup was illuminating. Workers’desks covered with game figurines, legos, and posters, and desktops cov-ered with digital tools, .mp3s, and IM conversations looked a lot morelike students’ bedrooms than it did their school environment. In fact,these successful game designers looked a lot more like the students them-selves than their teachers did. It was not hard to see that some in thisclass could go on to work at agames company; others mightwork in computer science, aca-demics, publishing, or the mediaindustry – all of which looked alot more like work in a gamecompany than in their schools.None of the adult identities rou-tinely shown in school – admin-istrators, teachers, service work-ers have anything much to dowith the skills, literacies, andidentities these students saw at Firaxis.

Oddly, I had expected the highlight of the field trip to be the chance tosee game artwork and meet these “game designer heroes”; instead, thehighlight seemed to be seeing that their literacies – their ways of con-suming information, making meaning, and being in the world which arelargely banned from school had much value outside of school. Usinginstant messenger to get the answers to problems (something that mostschools discourage, to what extent they are even aware of it) was actu-ally a sign of intelligent problem solving. Management work, includingbudgeting wasn’t done by hand; work is distributed into intelligent toolslike Microsoft Excel. Couches, televisions, and foosball tables replacepunch clocks and time cards. The values of new capitalism (peopleworking in cross functioning teams according to their needs and sched-ules) replaces the industrial model of social organization (everyoneworking in carefully regulated projects and time scales) on whichschools are organized. Life in the (sadly quickly fading) independentgame house is organized around what Himanen (2001) calls the “hack-er work ethic”. Work can and should follow from one’s passions.Activity should follow creative rhythms rather than time clocks.People’s best work is done when they “join forces in imaginative ways”and individual autonomy, responsibility, creativity, privacy, and dignityare more important than simply profit. Firaxis’ noted profit sharingpiqued the interest of many students, and as they prepared to leave,Caudill reminded them that even though games are now very complexprojects requiring dozens of creative, talented people, it is still possibleto create a game in a garage with a group of friends.

On the fifth day, we reconvened to let students finish their games anddebrief the experience. Much discussion focused on the work environ-ment in Firaxis, particularly concepts like flex time, profit sharing, and“an instant messenger friendly workplace”. I also warned them that alife like that they saw in Firaxis is unusual for the games industry; witha good contrast being Electronic Arts, which is currently under a classaction lawsuit by its developers for unpaid overtime. But we also dis-sected the game and discussed the various design decisions developers

made. We discussed what they might have done to make the game moregender friendly. We discussed the current state of the games industry(including the impact of MMORPGs on the industry and the chancesthat World of Warcraft would sell 1 million copies). In short, weengaged in the kind of analysis, speculation, and argumentation thatstudents do when they review cases in the Harvard Business School(although admittedly a bit less sophisticated).

We also discussed the geography and history of the Caribbean, as wellas historical accuracies and inaccuracies in the game. It was clear that

students had mechanisms forjudging what was accurate in thegame and what was not. The mapwas accurate. Time was somewhataccurate; they did not detect howthe game manipulated time tocreate a more engaging experi-ence. They “read” the game ashaving very unrealistic swordfights, and the class as a wholenoted that no one ever died, orwas gruesomely killed the way

they were in the stories of pirates. The ship battles seemed more realis-tic, although they deduced some logical inaccuracies in the ship battles(i.e. why can pirates only attack with one ship). Building on stories weheard at Firaxis, we discussed how in play tests the game designers foundthat giving people control over one flagship was more fun than multi-ple ships, because the player was more likely to identify with the flag-ship, developing an emotional tie to the ship as one might a vehicle.

As the week ended, the teachers and students were interested in doinganother workshop. The partnering teachers and administrators whowere sympathetic toward games, started to recognize that they had notreally played a modern commercial video game. They knew that gamedevelopment involved computer programming, but had no idea thatgame production also had ties to physics, mathematics, art, sculpture,architecture, psychology, and marketing.7 In post-interviews, partner-ing teachers shared surprise at how complex games and gaming culturewere, and how it engaged their students.

Implications: Games as Inquiry-BasedLearningJudge Limbaugh’s ignorance about games suggests the importance ofmedia literacy programs for elected officials, educators, parents, and stu-dents. Given that the Nintendo generation is now having children oftheir own, social institutions like schools and government risk lam-pooning themselves by making such statements. Games are only onesite where we can see this divide happening, but they seem to be a crit-ical one, providing a crucial inroads to digital literacies where studentslearn to think with digital tools, use sites of collective intelligence, net-work socially via communication tools, and become producers, not justconsumers of information. As Pew Internet studies (2002) have shown(and these students’ visit to Firaxis would suggest), there is an ever-widening gap between those who use technologies Internet generations’relation to information, social networks, and learning, and those whodo not. If media literacy programs are seriously going to engage with thedeeper cultural significance of media shifts, they will need to take seri-

“ E V O LVING TOWARD A MINDSET WHERE MEDIA

LITERACY IS NOT AN END STATE BUT A

CONTINUOUS PROCESS OF INQUIRY,

I N V E S T I G ATION AND SELF-REFLECTION WOULD

S E RVE NOT ONLY OUR STUDENTS, BUT OUR

MEDIA AND POLICY MAKERS AS WELL.”


ously the social and cultural differences between digital generations andmore traditional ones.

Historical games provide one opportunity for getting students to thinkmore deeply about media, including not just the meanings in texts, butalso the politics behind their production and consumption. When situ-ated within a program that discusses how games are made it providesone inroads for talking about not just games, but how these gameschange the way we work, think, learn, play, and interact. Perhaps sur-prisingly, the most deeply engaging part of this unit may not have beenthe games themselves, but students’ realization that there is a place fortheir literacies outside of school, and trajectories for them to developthese identities in professional settings. Of course, not every school cango to a games studio, but it’s very possible for many schools to go to webpublishing houses, interactive media developers, or other similar digitalproduction facilities. This article suggests just one approach to medialiteracy; I believe that good media literacy programs will need to gomuch further, being more fully integrated into other curricula.

Pedagogical models such as inquiry-based learning provide one promis-ing avenue for media literacy. Becky Rosenberg, a 4th grade teacher inMadison, Wisconsin has been working with our research group to build

inquiry-based lesson plans around gaming. Most students have a keeninterest in questions around gaming, particularly in finding what gamestheir peers are playing, different gender preferences with games, or howtheir attitudes toward games differ from their parents. With a little scaf-folding, it seems possible to get students to ask intelligent questionsaround games and do some complex thinking around core issues in psy-chology, communications, and media studies. Given student’s interestin games, how little we know about games and how quickly the field ischanging, games seem like an excellent location for inquiry-basedapproaches to education.

Ultimately, such an inquiry-based approach to media literacy whichdraws on students’ questions and involves gathering and examiningdata, and building coherent arguments, and critiquing them withininterpretive communities is what we want media literacy to be. I suspectthat few of us particularly care if students know that Carmack andRomero developed DOOM, but we do care that they learn to ask ques-tions, construct arguments, communicate effectively, and listen to theirpeers. Evolving toward a mindset where media literacy is not an endstate but a continuous process of inquiry, investigation and self-reflec-tion would serve not only our students, but our media and policy mak-ers as well.•

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FOOTNOTES1

See the Interactive Digital Software Association v. St. Louis Countyhttp://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data2/circs/8th/023010p.pdf

2There is in fact some trickiness as to what was the first purely 3D shooter. Withoutgetting into all of it, I recommend Kusher’s Master’s of Doom, and WagenerJame’s Au’s excellent review in Salon.

3Of course, there is no “one” gamer Discourse, any more than there is any oneacademic (or even media literacy) discourse. The web of meaning suggested inthe previous Doom example is one that will be familiar to many gamers (particular-ly older PC or LAN gamers), but might be foreign to console, strategy, orJapanese RPG fans. There are, however, points of intersection, places wherethese discourses. Ironically, just at the time of this writing, Microsoft released aparent’s guide to gamer speak.http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/children/kidtalk.mspxThis example makes fairly evident the dangers of just discussing the surface fea-tures of a Discourse without dealing with its underlying politics.

4For a longer description of this experience, see, Kurt Squire: Reframing theCultural Space of Games at http://cms.mit.edu/games/education/research-vision.html

5This study occurred in January of 2005. If you were playing World of Warcraft atthe time, you would know that this was a somewhat impressive achievement for amiddle school student, requiring at least a few hundred hours of work and imply-ing some dedication to gaming.

6Most were culled from websites including Cindy Vallar’s excellent Pirates andPrivateers: The History of Maritime Piracyhttp://www.cindyvallar.com/pirates.html

7As a good example of this cultural and knowledge divide, the partnering schoolhad a difficult time recruiting a teacher to go on a field trip of Firaxis. Imagine, for asecond, 40 years ago a school having the chance to visit Abbey Road, and teach-ers not going.

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